
Class__£. 



Book 



.3 



THE CRISIS OF THE TIMES 

A. SERMOISr 



PREACHED IN THE 



^ir$t ^f^$6j)UrUn |p5«^^5^fi 




WASHINGTON. D. C 



ON THE EVENING OF 



TuiHi isTj^rrxoisTj^Xj :fjlst. 



THURSDAY. APRIL 30, I8G3, 



Rev. BYRON SUNDERLAND, D. D. 



WASHINGTON : 

" X A T 1 O >• A L banner" PRESS. 

1863. 



THE CRISIS OF THE TIMES: 

A SERMON /W 



PREACHED IW THB 



Jfirst Irubgterian CJurt|, 



WASHINGTON, D. C. 



ON THE EVENING OF 



THE NATIONAL FAST, 

Tbursday, April 30, 1863, 



Rbv. BYRON SUNDERLAND, D. D. 
it 



Tbxt. — liaiah Iviii., 1-7. — "Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy 
voice like a trumpet, and show my people their transgression, and 
the house of Jacob their finst!"* 



WASHINGTON : 

K A T I O K A I BAKNSR'' PBK8S, 

1868. 



^58 



COERESPONDENC:Er. 



Washington, D. C, 3Iay 2, 1863, 

Sir : I have been requested bj an association of pat- 
riotic citizens to ask of you for publication a copy of 
your discourse delivered on the evening of the National 
Fast day, that the thousands who were unable to hear 
may be permitted to read an authentic copy of that 
Tery able and patriotic address. 
With great respect. 

Your obedient servant, 

J. M. EDMUNDS. 
Rsv. Byron Suni>eelani>. 



Washington, 3Iay 5, 1863. 
Hon. J. M. Edmund3 : 

Sir : Your favor of the 2d instant is just received. 
The sermon which you request for publication wasf 
prepared and delivered under a sense of deep personal 
responsibility, on the most solemn occasion of our his- 
tory. So far as it may be read, I devoutly ])ray its 
effect to b€ only and lasting good. With daily suppli- 
cation for the complete triumph of the Government of 
the United States, and a glorious future for our beloved 
though now greatly afflicted country, I remain. 
Yours in the bonds of Christian patriotism, 

B. SUNDERLAND. 



SERMON. 



Isaiah l-riii., 1-7. — Cry aload, spare not, lift up thy roice lite a 
trumpet, and show my people their transgression, and the house of 
Jacob their sins. 

Yet they seek me daily and delight to know my ways, as a nation 
that did righteousness and forsook not the ordinance of their God; 
they ask of me the ordinances of justice : they take delight in ap- 
proaching to God. 

Wherefore have we fasted, say they, and thou seest not? where- 
fore haye we afflicted our soul, and thou takest no knowledge? 
Behold, in the day of your fast ye find pleasui-e, and exact all your 
labors. Behold, ye fast for strife and debate, and to smite with th& 
fist of wickedness ; ye shall not fast as ye do this day, to make your 
"soice to be heard on high. 

Is it BVich a fiist that I have chosen, a day for a man to afflict his 
soul ? Is it to bow down his head as a bulriish,. and to spread sack- 
sloth and ashes untler him ? Wilt thou call this a fast and an ac» 
feptable day to the Lord? 

Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the bands of wick- 
edness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, 
and that ye break every yoke? 

Is it not to deal thy bread to the hiin^gry, and that thou bring th* 
poor that are cast out to thy hov^e? when thou seest the naked thai 
thou cover him ; and that thou hide not thyself from thine owa 
flesh? 

This day is to me as solemn as a day of judgment. 
When I think what we^ the people of America, our 
rulers and chief men in all stations^ have been professing 
to do this day, before God and in the sight of all the 
aations of the earth, I tremble from head to foot, ia 
every joint. What is it that we have been professing 
to do this day ? X have read it to you in the procla- 



matiou of the President. How many out of the thirty- 
two millions of human souls composing this nation 
have not even pretended to observe the day in forml 
And of those who have pretended to comply with the 
request of the proclamation, how many have made of 
it only a fearful mockery in the sight of God ! How 
few comparatively of all these multitudes has the Om- 
niscient Eye beheld in a suitable and acceptable posture 
before him ! Truly, the heart of man is deceitful above 
ail things and desperately wicked j and who can know 
it? We may well fear in regard to all of us that it is 
now as it was before the flood, and that God sees that 
the wickedness of man is great in the earth, and that 
every imagination of the thought of his heart is only 
evil continually. And we may devoutly pray, each one 
of us all, in the language of the Psalmist, Search me, 
God, and know my heart j try me, and know my 
thoughts, and see if there be any Avicked way in me, 
and lead me in the way everlasting. 

If we could think that thig day had been kept as a 
day of holy convocation unto the Lord, in the entire 
land, or even throughout the borders of the adhering 
States, and that among ail the people it had been ob- 
served in the same spirit which was manifest among 
the Ninevites under the preaching of Jonah, we might 
at least feel supported by the hope that such a repent- 
ance would be followed by immediate and signal dis- 
plays of divine favor in our behalf. Look for a moment 
at the record of that event. 

" Forty days and Nineveh shall be overthrown !'' 
That was the cry which rung through the city its ter- 
rible alarm. That, in substance, is the awful cry which 
goes out among all nations where human wickedness 
and corruption have become so fearful as to strike at 
the verv foundations of human societv, and to threaten 



the deinoliliou of the most stable and the raost beueti- 
cent structures of human government. This cry is 
travelling now through the length and breadth of our 
own land, like the travelling prophet in the midst of 
Nineveh ; and it has been so travelling for the three days 
as of old, and a year for a day. It began afar off in the 
fears, the anxieties, the predictions of the wisest and 
best men of the nation ; and it waxed nearer and louder, 
the awful cry of Heaven's indignation against the land 
for its wickedness, until, two years ago it broke in the 
thunders of the cannonade at Charleston. Since then, 
that cry has been reverberating in the North and in the 
South, in the East and in the West — the voice that 
thunders at noonday, the voice that startles at mid- 
night, the warning of a nation's overthrow, the disso- 
lution of American republican empire. Its echoes are 
heard in the sobs and moanings of a hundred thousand 
families, over whom a pall of mourning for the slain 
has settled. Its accents tremble fearfully in the pas- 
sions of men, who, animated as by a spirit of diabolical 
fury, are ready to inaugurate a storm of anarchy and 
violence, compared with which the convulsions of the 
physical creation are tame and innocuous. This is our 
position to-day ; and that prophet-cry rolls on una- 
bated, Wo, wo, wo to the inhabitants of the land ! All 
the air is full of its portents ; all the signals of provi- 
dence foreherald its desolations. Nay, the one prophet 
voice, that sounded the doom of ancient Nineveh, is now 
multiplied into ten thousand times ten thousand voices, 
that surge and thunder around and before, above and 
behind us, on every side. And the simple meaning of 
it now is, as tlien it was, repentance or-ruin. Besotted 
and blind with insensibility or infatuation must he be 
who cannot now at this late day perceive that this is 
our precise condition as individuals and as a nation. 



What came next? They believed God — king, nobles, 
and people. There is a volume of meaning in that short 
sentence. It opens the secret of all that followed. 
That is the only remedy for us now ; in that ig our 
health. But if this faith in God be confined to a few 
only, as I fear it is ; if, like Abraham pleading for the 
cities of the plain, and putting one condition after an- 
other to narrow the chances of their destruction, they 
who believe God in this nation at this hour are too few 
in proportion to the whole to render it by their right- 
eousness worth the saving, then the boldest of us may 
turn pale, and the most sanguine may despair, for the 
principles of the Divine government are fixed. God can 
by no means clear the guilty. He is of one mind, and 
who can turn Him ? When He rises up, who can stand 
before Him ? Oh, that we are now in such a case before 
Him, and that we have reason to believe that multitudes 
everywhere in the land have no more personal or prac- 
tical regard to the voice of His judgments, than to an 
oldwife's fable, is a fact so appalling as to transcend 
the power of human expression. Because it augurs 
that, in spite of all our hopes, and all our faith, and all 
our desire, we are nevertheless descending every hour 
and at every step in the path of inevitable and swift 
destruction. It means simply this, and nothing else. 
We are at this moment in our national life in a condition 
like that of a man in his skiff already drawn upon the 
breakers above Niagara, and already partaking of the 
speed and drift of that resistless current, which, unless 
a miracle be interposed, will surelj* carry him over the 
precipice. That is our d:vnger, I am persuaded, in 
our moral and spiritual condition as a nation. But 
was that the case with Nineveh ? Far otherwise; they 
believed God. 

And what next ? The king, with. hifl_ nobles, pro- 



claimed a fast, and caused it to be published througii- 
out the city, saying. Let every living thing be cast 
down, let tliem not taste drink or food, let them be 
clothed iu sackcloth and mourn for sin, let them turn 
every one from his evil way and from the violence that 
is in their hands, and let them cry mightily unto God. 
Who can tell if God will turn and repent, and turn 
away from His fierce anger, that we perish not? And 
after this solemn proclamation of the king, in the sight 
of all the people, where do we hear of him next ? Not in 
scenes of dissolute amusement, not convoking hig 
chamber of nobles, or reviewing his mighty armies to 
make a gala-day of holy time j not recklessly exhibiting 
an example in the presence of his subjects which might 
least tend to prepare them or him for the solemn period 
of mourning to which they bad been called. No, this 
is not the conduct of the king of Nineveh. He believed 
God, and his works corresponded to his faith. He left 
nothing to be done by proxy. He saw clearly enough 
that his own action would powerfully influence the 
action of the population. He was in earnest in the 
business of seeking God — in calling the city over which 
he ruled, to avert the threatened calamity, by the one 
way of appointment, which has ever been open to all 
the generations of men. And so we are told that he 
arose from his throne and laid his robe from him, and 
covered him with sackcloth and sat in ashes That 
was bis position before God and in the sight of the 
nation in that day of humiliation. 

And what next? All the people followed his ex- 
ample. There is probably nothing on record equal to 
this repentance of Nineveh for its thoroughness and 
universality. It was genuine, radical, efficacious. 
There was no concealment, no hypocrisy, no mockery 
then. It was heart-felt, rational, and entire. It moved 



10 



all minds; struck at the }ilague of every man's heart: 
reformed evei'y soul of all the multitudes of the city. 
It was a moral miracle of the gi*ace and power of 
God, imbuing a whole- population suddenly with a 
sense of sin — with a sense of duty and obligation to 
God — and the most profound conviction of dependence 
upon Him and of hope only in His mercy. It was that 
repentance which transformed them — made them a dif- 
ferent community from what they were before — made 
them new creatures — changed all their habits of feel- 
ing, thought, and conduct — changed their principles, 
their views, their motives, their life — brought them to 
renounce their former profligacy and returnj to 
the path of purity, soberness, and peace. They be- 
lieved and embraced the truth of God just so far, 
just so fast as it was made known to them. They en- 
tered directly upon the obedience of this faith. They 
espoused the cause of the right, and set their faces as 
a flint against everything false and wrong. They be- 
came a righteous people, by the putting away, evea*y 
one of them, their iniquities. 

Now, in this i-espect, it was not with them as, I fear, 
it is with us. Their repentance was individual and 
personal, as well as federative and national. But we; 
how do we feel? Has every human being in this na- 
tion to-day, capable of reflection and capable of know- 
ing and understanding his relation and duties to God, 
solemnly considered and reviewed the delinquencies 
and transgressions of his past life, and devoutly pur- 
posed, God helping him, to be a better man in the future; 
to lead a life of Christian piety and prayer, and to let 
all men know that henceforth he no longer halts be- 
tween two opinions — henceforth he is on the Lord's 
side, in life, in death, and to all eternity? The man 
who has not come up to that mark and standard this 



11 



day, I pronounce, in so far, an enemy of God and his 
country. The man who has failed to do that, has sig- 
nally failed to answer the end for which this day was 
appointed; and for the mode in which it has been met 
by us God will hold each one to a solemn and fearful 
accountability. We cannot appoint these days of na- 
tional humiliation and prayer in the sight of mankind, 
as we have done one after the other in time past, and 
trifle Avith their very meaning and intention, with im- 
punity. If we undertake to do this, we shall find out 
to our sorrow that we are wrestling with One who can 
easily overthrow us, One who will see, that in our ob- 
duracy and blindness, we are utterly ground to powder. 
The Ninevites seem to have thoroughly comprehended, 
the significance of this, and they kept the fast, not 
merely in the outward forms of humiliation, but in the 
spirit and the soul, in verity and truth. They realized 
and illustrated, in their experience and by their exam- 
ple, the very nature of that fast which is here so 
emphatically commended in our text, and which is 
alone the fast that is acceptable to God. 

And then what next? God saw their works that 
they turned from their evil way, and God repented of 
the evil that he had said that he would do unto them, 
and he did it not. Oh ! the unutterable tenderness and 
fidelity of the Divine placability. Go see the old 
father hanging with tears of compassion and joy upon 
the neck of his long-lost son. That is God in all the 
constraining mercies of his unutterable love. That is 
the great and terrible One in the heavens, in whose 
anger is infinite might, in whose wrath is desolating 
and withering power. But what He is to the contuma- 
cious, that He is not to the believing, the penitent, and 
sincere. To tliose who by patient continuance in well- 
doing, are chosen to stand before Him. everything in 



u 



the being, the character, the attributes, the law, the 
government, the purposes and providence of God, is 
friendly. For them and for their final triumph, He has 
stored the universe. They shall never be confounded. 
All things shall work for their good. But to the evil, 
all shall work for evil. The very slumber of God's 
wrath. His yearning His weeping, all shall turn at last 
into the fierceness of indignation against themT What 
then is the alternative? Where do we stand? The 
point to be remembered is, not whether the Lord is 
on our side, but whether we are on the Lord's side. 
The simple question before us this day is not 
whether God will withdraw his judgments, but whether 
we are an incorrigible people. That is the whole 
sum and substance of it, and that is the issue now 
to be tried; it is the very thing which constitutes 
the gist and stress of our present condition and ex- 
perience. If, as time rolls on and the alarm of ruin is 
sounded in our ears, we will neither heed nor hear it; if 
we will shut our eyes persistently and madly to all the 
proofs and tokens of the Divine displeasure; if we will 
not learn nor comprehend the lessons of our duty and 
obligation; if we will refuse to inquire of God what he 
would have us to do; and if when truth is shown us 
we will not embrace it, will not espouse it, will not 
stand by it, will not defend it at all hazards and costs, 
albeit even to the giving up of life; if we are and 
continue to be so indifferent to God's cause in the 
earth, so inconsiderate, so hard of heart, so blind and 
perverse, so brutish and benighted as not to see nor 
perceive nor know the things which belong to our true 
peace, why then, of course, we must be destroyed; 
there is no other alternative; we may as well make up 
our minds to it at once. He that spared not his own 
Son will not spare the guilty nations of the earth. He. 



IH 



that in tears of bitter anguish stood by and saw Jeru- 
salem utterly wasted, will also stand by and see this 
country mined, if we as a people shall continue incor- 
rigible. 

\Yhile stating in this broad form my conviction of 
this fearful doctrine, I am aware there is another prin- 
ciple on which God sometimes proceeds in His admin- 
istration over the affairs of men, and in His disposition 
of the communities and nations of the earth, and that 
is — He does sometimes interpose to save a multitude 
from impending destruction, or to postpone a public 
calamity for the sake of a few, or even sometimes of 
one of His faithful servants. Thus when Moses plead 
for the life of his nation, God turned from the purposed 
destruction for the time; and so when Solomon in his 
old age had defiled the land with idolatry, God threat- 
ened the rending of the kingdom, but postponed it to 
the succeeding reign for the sake of David his father. 
But this is the fearful law of all human iniquity, that 
sooner or later its retribution must come. Vengeance 
upon sin, though long delayed and slumbering long, 
must come at last, in spite of all the memories of the 
pious dead or of all the tears and prayers of the pious 
living. There must come a day in the history of every 
incorrigible people when God says my spirit shall no 
longer strive with man. Ephraim is joined to his idols; 
let him alone. Though Moses and Samuel stood before 
me, yet my mind could not be toward this people. 
And when that day comes, it is the old story of Egypt 
and Babylon, of Assyria and Greece and Rome, under 
the philosophy and religion of Paganism ; and it is the 
more modern story of the European and American na- 
tions under the dispensation of Christianity. It is a 
day of pride and luxury and fulness of bread, a day of 
the laxity of all moral discipline and the perversion of 



14 



all moral principle, a dti}^ of individucal and social 
debauchery andcorruption, aday when the very -thoughts 
of men are twisted and turned out of the way, and 
human nature, salacious, infidel and irreligious, even 
amid all the circumstances of outward refinement and 
intellectual development, presents a spectacle of apos- 
tacy at once the most disgusting and the most alarm- 
ing. When society reaches this point, as I verily be- 
lieve it has this day in our country, there is but one of 
two things that must speedily follow: either a re- 
pentance and reformation approaching that of Nineveh, 
or ruin and destruction, remediless and condign. 

All this is clearly set fortli in this message of 
Isaiah. God deals with us as with rational beings. 
He is full of succor and salvation towards us if we 
are only resolved on simply doing right. In this 
posture of mind everything is favorable. God has 
so constituted his universe that we have no cause for 
fear or alarm, no cause to bow down our head as a 
bulrush or cover ourselves with sackcloth, or to spend 
a day in the abasing and servile affliction of the soul, 
or in making our faces long and sad, when we have 
once closed the struggle with ourselves, and have come 
to the firm determination to do exactly' right. It is 
only before this self-struggle is concluded, and while 
we are yet in the bondage and pollution of sin and 
guilt and condemnation, that we may justly fear. While 
we seek to conceal our sin, to cover up our iniquity, 
to cancel it by atonements and penances and prayers, 
instead of freely and fully confessing and forsaking it, 
then it is that we may observe all the outward for- 
malities of religion, and still wonder why God does 
not regard us, nor hear our prayer. Nothing but 
honesty before God, nothing but truth and sincerity 
will do in a cnse like ours. We may perform the cere- 



15 



vnoHies of oonfessiou and supplication, we may go 
without food for a day, we may cover ourselves with 
sackcloth, and vainly endeavor to appease our own 
conscience or attract upon ourselves the favorable 
notice of the Searcher of all hearts, but He knows all 
the time that our appi'oaches to Him are only in ap- 
pearance and in word, while our hearts are far from 
Him. He knows that what we do in the performance 
of th€ services of religion, we do for a cover of our 
wickedness, and for a salvo to a wounded conscience, 
but not as tlie expression of a broken heart and a con- 
trite spirit. We fast, indeed, we afflict ourselves for 
a day, but we repent of nothing in all this; we fast 
for debate and strife, and to smite with the fist of wick- 
edness, and yet we wonder that God takes no knowl- 
edge of all our pains. How can He recognize such a 
state of mind, and such a spirit, as the fast which He 
has chosen ? There is no truth in it, no reformation 
in it, no forsaking of sin, no real confession of wrong 
whatever. Therefore, God cannot recognize such a 
fast. He must loathe and abhor it, and turn it into 
a more bitter curse. 

But the prophet vividly draws tlic contrast between 
a true fast and this mockery. ' ' Is not this the fast that 
I havechosen — to loose thebandsof wickedness, to undo 
the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, 
and that ye break every yoke? Is it not to deal thy 
bread to the hungry, and to bring the poor that are 
cast out to thy house, to take away the yoke, the put- 
ting forth of the finger, and speaking vanity? Is it 
not to turn away thy foot from the Sabbath, from doing 
thy pleasure on my holy day; and to call the Sabbath 
a delight, the holy of the Lord, honoi'able; and shall 
honor him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine 
own pleasure?" What a contract there is in a fast like 



16 



this! Here is the devout and filial recognition a,nd 
reverence of God and of His lav/ and ordinances. Here 
is the separation of the soul and of society from the 
Tices and iniquities that have defiled and corrupted 
them. Here is the positive abandonment of selfish- 
ness and covetousness, of violence, cruelty, and op-- 
pression in all their forms. Here is the ceasing from 
vices and evils which contaminate and degrade, and 
from all sentiments, opinions, prejudices, habits, prac- 
tices, and customs of a pernicious tendency, and of a 
doubtful propriety in all relations and among all 
elasses of human beings. And here are the opposite 
dispositions, virtues, and charities which constitute 
the cap-sheaf and the crown of all our usefulness, and 
all our happiiiess both here aad hereafter. God pre- 
sents this contrast of moral and spiritual attributes of 
S.uman character as the very soul and substance of all 
acceptable sacrifice, prayer, and worship; and upon 
the presence or absence of these elements in a day like 
this, depends the issue of its observance. 

There ^is at this point another momentuos truth 
which adds solemnity to our present national posture 
in the sight of heaven and before the eyes of all men. 
It is that no nation that ever existed has sinned 
against such light as this nation. The degree of light 
against which a people go on to sin is a most impor- 
tant element in determining the grade or extent of 
guilt or heinousness which must be estimated a& 
belonging to its offences. Tried by this rule, no 
people were ever so guilty as we have been. When 
Nineveh repented, she had only before her eyes the 
example of the cities of the plain and some of the 
earlier catastrophes of human sin. When Jerusalem 
was destroyed, it was even then before the day of the 
Christian Era had fairly begun to shine. But we, we 
■who live in the light of the nineteenth century, and 



17 



upon whom History lias poured all its examples, wid 
Providence all its illustrations, and Inspiration all its 
instructions ; we who have lived in the shining faces 
of all God's angels of truth and ministers of grace; 
we who have basked in the summer sun-light of 
an unclouded Gospel ; we who have looked morning, 
noon, and night upon the glorious walking of the 
Sun of Righteousness ; we who have been taught 
from infancy the simple but sublime principles of the 
Christian faith — of God and eternity, human life, duty, 
and destiny — we have sinned against the light of the 
Sermon on the Mount, against the light of all the 
evangelists and epistles of the New Testament, against 
the light of the Reformation and our own Revolution, 
against the grandest and most glorious age of Chris- 
tian charities and missions the world has ever seen, 
against the light of eighty years of unparalleled pros- 
perity, against the light of all its science, its learning, 
its discovery, its discussion, its mighty franchise. 
We have sinned, while holding in trust the noblest 
heritage ever held by any people, while having charge 
in effect of the last and most precious hopes of human 
nature. And now through our follies and sins we have 
brought ourselves to the verge of ruin, and unless God 
in his infinite mercy shall swiftly interpose through 
mysteries of His providence and grace higher and 
deeper than any we have ever known, to prevent the 
calamity, we shall plunge over and sink, one and all, 
into an abyss of shame and infamj' such as no people 
ever contracted, not even the doomed and wandering 
house of Israel. 

This, as I humbly conceive it, is our condition to- 
day. We are to be tried upon the principle of the 
degree of light we have enjoyed ; and so tried we can- 
not but see that wherein the nation h.^s sinned, it is 



18 



in these regards the foremost sinner among all thtt 
nations of history. 

And noTV it is said in the word of God that when 
His judgments are abroad in the earth, the inhabi- 
tants of the world will learn righteousness. Let us 
consider whether those judgments are abroad among 
us, for our sins — and if so, what they are, and how 
many, and how heavy; for God suits His judgments 
to our sins — makes our sins, indeed, the punishment 
of themselves. This is that which gives to retribu- 
tion its fearful power. We are, as a people, under a 
heavy hand. The principal feature of these judgments 
is that we have been left to ourselves; we have been 
left to be filled with the fruit of our own doings. They 
are not the judgments of famine or pestilence or earth- 
quakes, the invisible and wasting scourges which go 
over the earth decimating and destroying, by a law 
too subtle for our tracing and too secret for our pene- 
tration. But they proceed from the shock and collision 
of human agencies, directed and impelled by the con- 
flicting sentiments and passions which lie behind them. 
They stand before us in all the woes and horrors of 
a bitter, protracted, desolating civil war. From the 
forum of peaceful discussion and republican suffrage, 
the controversy has been carried to the last resort of 
physical force, violence, and blood. And this has 
been done under circumstances and with concomitants 
of evil such as to affect the whole mind and heart of 
the nation with every form of affliction and mental 
distress. Upon the more open and tangible effects of 
such a civil war as this, in its bearing upon the dis- 
ruption of business, the destruction of property and 
even the loss of human life, it is not my pui'pose to 
dwell. The shock thus given to the country, the dis- 
order it produces, the derangement and uncertainty 



]'9 



it occasions, the burdens it imposes, and tlie fortianes 
it destroys, are all matters with which the people of 
this country are but too sadly familiar. And yet even 
in these things, through all the regions of the adher- 
ing, with the exception of the border States, these 
judgments of God have thus far been tempered with 
singular mercy, and have on the general scale been 
marvellously mitigated. Indeed, so far in the contro- 
versy, it is to be feared that the people inhabiting 
these sections of the Republic, thro' their comparative 
exemption from the storm, do not even yet take to 
heart the awful nature of the judgments now smiting 
the land, nor comprehend the extent and derjth of 
their complicity in the sins which have culminated in 
this fury. I make all allowance, indeed, for what 
they have dene and borne and sacrificed ; but when it 
is all subtracted, the present thrift, and drift, and 
appearance, and a-ction, and condition of the people 
in all those regions, constitute a ground of wonder 
and amazement at the loug suffering and tender mercy 
of our God. It as, indeed, upon the people of the 
border States, and throughout the region where tlie 
sway of the rebellion is still rigid ami unbroken, that 
the woes and miseries of this tempest have hitherto 
been falling heaviest; And when we do but try to 
conceive the depths of the sorrow of the true and faith- 
ful people in these regions, ixnd to contemplate even 
one tithe of what they have yulfL-red in their most keen 
and sacred sensibilities, no power of words can express 
fully the nature and extent of their wretchedness. 
The disruption of business associations, the separation 
of families, the social ostracism, the fearful aliena- 
tions of human hearts, the cruelties perpetrated, the 
scenes of persecution, the grinding heel of despotism, 
*iie awful profanity and jocularity of death in his 



2t> 



jaurderous round, surely nothing in the horrors of 
the French Revolution can be said to have transcendeo: 
the miseries and anguish of men, women, and chil- 
dren Trhose only provocation to the tormentors is their 
"anchanging love and devotion for the Union and Gov- 
ernment of their fathers. The sanie spirit, though in 
a form as yet modified and restiiiin^id, we have wit- 
nessed and felt here in the very Capital of the country.. 
The lines of division have run right through old and 
long established friendships, have sundered pastors 
and people, have made a man's foes even them of his 
own household, and have engendered the bitterness 
and fostered the prejudices that ever Avalk forth as 
the premonitory spectres of social and ecclesiatical 
dissolution. So that the question is no longer a mere 
question of party politics, or preference for a candi- 
date, or a question of some measure of sectional or 
local policy, but it is a question of fundament ssl char- 
acter, a question of human right and duty, a question 
of human conscience, a question of the life and death 
of a mighty nation ; and along with this there are 
questions of the most amazing and appalling compli- 
cation and difficulty, all arising from the confusion 
and variety of public sentiment, and from the moral 
obliquity and perversion of thenational mind and heart. 
The very things v/hich now strain and try this nation 
are traceable to the sins of the nation. It is not ig- 
norance that is trying us now, but wilful, wanton 
blindness, unreasoning selfishness, and the practical 
atheism of the people, from which as from an ex- 
haustless fountain rolls the current of our follies, our 
errors, and our crimes — passion and prejudice, sus- 
picion, jealousy, lust for power, avarice, intrigue, ha- 
tred, rancor, all inflamed and aggravated by the open 
Trenality and flagrant wickedness of the public press . 



2V 



Political confusion and judicial blindn^esa are the real 
judgments which now lie upon the land, which now 
•confuse and bewilder those who would be honest, 
who desire to be true, who want nothing in this 
'Controversy but what is right, but what is in accord- 
ance with the will and law of God, and who would 
gladly do what they may to establish the institutions 
of the Government upon a &ure foundation of public 
righteousness ; who feel that it is no time for sophis- 
tries and technicalities, for quibbles and formalities, 
but who go for the substance of doctrine, the eternal 
righteousness of God in all the relations of man to his 
fellow-man, as well as ef men to God. And because 
we are confounded in these things, and do not even 
yet know whether a lie is in our right hand, we are 
still groping and stumbling on the dark mountains of 
sin and shame, our eyes blinded, our ears heavy, our 
hearts hardened, and our hands paralyzed ; we are 
as a nation in a swound, feeling the sharp sting of 
God's goads spurring us out of our stupor, but yet 
drowsy and but a little awake, only seeing men as 
trees walking, and filled with the pains and agonies, 
not, we hope, of a second death, but of a second birth. 
This it seems to me is our condition under the present 
judgments of Heaven. 

And now we have no right to shut our eyes to the 
«in8 which form the ground of indictment against ua. 
We are guilty if we attempt to do this, guilty in the 
attempted concealment; and we are really the more 
culpable if, on an occasion like this, we undertake to 
blink or flinch from the full acknowledgment and 
recognition of any one of the sins of which we as in- 
dividuals, or as communities, or as a nation have been 
guilty in the sight of heaven. But where shall we 
S>egiB the catalogue of these iniquities ? It is even 



difficult to classify and docameat them. Willi » 
language copious in terms significant of human in- 
iquities, we should exhaust the vocabulary of our 
mother-tongue long before we could express the full 
tale of our private and public delinquencies — sins of 
the heart, sins of the spirit, sins of the flesh, sins of 
ignorance and sins of wantonness, sins of omission 
and sins of commission, secret sias and open sins, 
personal sins and social sins, sins in the family and 
sins in the church, sins in business life, sins in fash- 
ionable life, sins in private life and sins in official life, 
sins political and sins ecclesiastical. In all these 
forms of human depravity, the terrific principle of 
spiritual wickedness seeks its m.anifestation. 

All sin is fiery, and eats as doth a canker. It rid- 
dles out the very basis of moral character in man; it 
frets and wears away the warp and woof of the confir- 
dences and securities of human life ; it is the moral 
azote. ^Nothing of spiritual purity can live in its pres- 
ence ; under its impulse and dominion men have their 
lusts excited, their passions inflamed, their under- 
standings darkened, their consciences seared, and 
their hearts hardened. So prepared they enter upon 
life, and in the choice of avocations, of associates, of 
aims, and of means to those aims, they are constantly 
exposed to powerful temptations which break down 
all moral restraint, and send them on in a career of 
immorality, impiety, and dishonesty, which not only 
proves their own ruin, but seriously tends to injure 
and corrupt all with whom they come in contact. Out 
of all this mass of human iniquity certain cardinal 
forms of human sin and profligacy appear. 

In defining national oS'ences, each man must pursue 
his own method, and make his own distinctions. I 
am not disposed to be over nice, or careful, in adher- 



2S 



ing istrictly to technical or theological terms, or the pop- 
ular phraseology of the day. I shall consider those sins 
national which are known as open, public, or gene- 
ral, whether in a form organized or unorganized. I 
shall consider those as national sins which involve the 
great majority of the people in their practice, their 
motive, or their sympathy. On the subject of private 
and personal sins, which are to be confessed and re- 
paired in a manner corresponding to their nature, I 
need not now undertake, as it would be manifestly 
impossible, to dwell, any further than to say that the 
whole aggregate of them, no doubt, furnishes one 
serious and solemn reason for the private and public 
afflictions that are resting on all the land. But there 
are some general and positive forms of sin which it 
would, in my judgment, be the sheerest hypocrisy to 
overlook on a day like this. 

I. And the first I mention is the practical rejection 
of the Gospel of Jesus Christ by vast numbers of the 
people. This is so general that it amounts, in my 
estimation, to a national sin of the deepest dye. 
It is tantamount to a charge of irreligion, impiety 
and atheism, and is the sin for which every man who 
stands in it is now arraigned before God. This is 
their condemnation, that light has come into the world 
and men have chosen darkness rather than light, be- 
cause their deeds are evil. He that believeth not on 
Christ is condemned already. For the testimony of 
Christ is the spirit of prophecy; and that is no less 
than the infinite spirit of truth, the spirit of God, the 
Holy Ghost. We have quenched that spirit and ex- 
tinguished its light. We have mocked at it until we 
are become vain and empty. We are no longer able 
to conquer, because God and His Christ have become a 
myth to us, and we have cast away the only might that 



24 



mftkes men and nations strong. I believe in my soul 
that God is angry with this nation, and is now bring- 
ing us into judgment because we have so many of us 
failed to confess Jesus Christ before men, and to re- 
ceive His spiritual kingdom into our heiarts with all 
its laws, agencies, influences, and effects. And I put 
this first and foremost, because it is a practical denial 
of God in the kingdom of His grace, and in the last 
means and methods He ever designs to employ for the 
recovery and salvation of mankind. It is, in effect, 
utterly ignoring his prerogative, despising his au- 
thority, and setting at nought his very mercy and 
compassion. It is the deepest insult, and the foulest 
dishonor, we can ever pay to him, because under the 
present dispensation it prepares the way for every 
other iniquity in the catalogue of human guilt. 

II. Again, I mention idolatry as a cardinal sin of 
which we have, in many forms, been guilty. It fol- 
lows that if men, who must have some object of 
sovereign desire to which they pay supreme devotion, 
will not have God for that object, they will, virtually, 
dethrone Him in their hearts, and establish there 
some idol-god of the current age. "We have all 
had gods of one kind or other before the Lord God 
Jehovah, and we have worshipped our idol, whatever 
it be, without regard to the claims, the command- 
ment, or the statutes of the one only true and ever- 
living God. I believe that He is angry with us for 
this, and that His indignation is now smoking against 
us, and against all our idol deities that we have cher- 
ished in the land. 

III. Again, I mention the general neglect and vio- 
lation of God's ordinances, the sabbath, and the sanc- 
tuary, and the profanation of His name. The whole 
»ir is loaded with a foul-mouthed profanity : and in 



25 



ffict all this is accompanied by a degree of levity, vul- 
garity, and vanity, that are as appalling as they are 
well nigh universal. Men who profess to be loyal to 
their country, openly and shamelessly trample on the 
sabbath, and provoke Him to anger who has said, I 
will not hold him guiltless that taketh my name in 
vain. I believe God is angry with us for this, and 
that His anger smokes, and will smoke, upon the pro- 
fane and impious race of men Avho treat the whole 
subject of Christianity, with its requirements and 
restraints, as a mere story, an idle song, who conduct 
in regard to it as if it were only a figment or fiction 
of the past. 

IV. Again, I mention the general corruption of 
manners and morals which is manifest in vice and 
dissipation, in excess, extravagance, and intempe- 
rance, everywhere — in the highest circles of fashion, 
in the lowest dens of infamy — and all this fostered and 
catered to by the bold and reckless corruptors of 
society, while the well nigh total failure to correct, 
restrain, or extinguish the public profligacy of the 
times, either by family and primary instruction, by a 
Christian public sentiment, by the laws of the land, 
or through the officers of the Government itself, is a 
delinquenc}' so great as to enhance our criminality, 
and increase the evils of our condition a thousand 
fold. There is no doubt but we. are suflFering from 
these evils in all the ramifications of human society; 
and in this respect, if God's wrath be not turned away 
by timely repentance, we must share the fate of every 
other people whose very luxuries and licenses have 
first enervated, and finally destroyed them. 

V. I mention again the spirit of cruelty and oppres- 
sion Avhich has marked the white race of America 



26 



toward the Indian and the African. When the chapter 
of our usurpations and perfidies toward the aborigines 
of this country shall be fully disclosed, we shall find, 
I greatly fear, that notwithstanding the treacherous 
and savage dispositions, and occasional outbreaks of 
the barbarians, the refinements of infamy which the 
dominant race have practiced upon them are not less 
repugnant to truth and justice, or heinous in the sight 
of God. And then as to the evils and wrongs of human 
bondage — when I come to speak upon this subject I am 
well aware that I touch the sensitive nerve, the sore 
spot, of this whole nation. And yet though I should 
encounter the settled convictions or prejudices of every 
man in the nation, I feel that I should not have per- 
formed my whole duty this day without plainly setting 
before you my estimate of the subject as it appears to 
me in the present light; and when I have done this as 
briefly as possible, I shall feel that I have finished my 
testimony in respect to this question by exhausting, so 
far as I am able, the obligation that rests upon me. 

First, then, I believe that the system of slavery as 
it has existed in our country when considered only in 
the light of the consequences that have followed it, 
has been an evil and a curse of the most appalling 
magnitude and enormity. To say nothing of its inci- 
dental or inherent and essential wrongs upon the 
African race, and after abating its alleged, fancied, 
or real advantages as an institution of human society, 
it is, as I firmly believe, nothing short of the solemn 
truth of God to declare that it has been ''the apple 
of discord," among the ruling race, tliat has wrought 
more dissension, more animosity, and more lasting 
bitterness and woe, than any one, or all other causes 
combined since the foundation of the Government. 
The traces of this evil are in the Federal Consti- 



I 



tution, legislation, and history of the country; but 
the spirit of the evil lies back of all written or 
documentary instruments ; lies in the unsanctitied 
mind, and heart, and passions of man ; lies in com- 
mercial cupidity, and ambition for political aristoc- 
racy and power. And, therefore, I do not believe that 
any one portion of the people in any one section of 
tlie land are alone to be blamed, or held accountable, 
for whatever of sin or suffering this system may have 
entailed upon us. " Since the war broke out, and th«- 
great events of its progress thus far have transpired, 
I am disposed to stand equally amazed at the proofs 
of human insincerity on the one hand, and the claims 
of divine authority on the other. I am constrained to 
censure the injustice of the laws of exclusion against 
this outcast portion of God's human creatures, and to 
denounce the cruel, preposterous, and inexorabl-e 
prejudice in which these laws are founded. I believe, 
in short, that the all-seeing eye of God beholds a de- 
gree of selfishness, hypocrisy, inconsistency, and false 
philanthropy upon this subject which positively 
amounts to the infatuation and frenzy of judicial 
blindness among all the people East and West, North 
and South, and which of itself would be sufficient to 
sink the whole nation into the nethermost pit of perdi- 
tion. And after long years of angry and embittered 
controversy, in which men have not known the man- 
ner of spirit they were of, this great, fearful, eompii- 
cated nva^s of guilt and misery, this awful nightmare 
and incubus which was lying across the very vitals 
of the nation vrhich no skill or foresight of human 
wisdom could remedy or relieve, has been thrown into 
the mighty scales of civil war, and the sword of God 
is unsheathed to cut the knot of this more than Gor- 
dian mystery ; and to rip from the heart of the nation^ 



28 



tlie disguises that have hiddea our own real condi- 
tion from our eyes ; and to solve in unanticipated ways, 
and by means we never could have foreseen, the ques- 
tions connected with this subject whicli have hitherto 
been both our torment and our shame. I believe that 
the time had come when nothing but war was left to 
open our eyes to our true moral state in the sight of 
God, and to educate the mind and heart of the nation 
to a new platform of doctrine, sentiment, and opin- 
ion, on this as well as on every other great interest of 
mankind in the advancing day of a Christian civiliza- 
tion. I believe it is the design of God that the sys- 
tem of African slavery shall pass away, and that the 
true era of its decline was struck when the first gun 
of the rebellion made its booming salutation to the 
brave Anderson and his little band under the case- 
mates of Sumter. And because I have been impressed 
with this belief from the beginning, and as occasion 
offered expressed it, there are those in this commu- 
nity who branded me with Avhat I imagine they sup- 
pose to be the vilest and most odious of epithets, and 
who regarded me as having wholly departed from the 
walks of clerical propriety. Here, then, I define my 
position. I am in favor of abolishing all human sin 
and wrong-doing, whether it be in connection with 
the black laws of the free States, or the slave laws of 
the South — whether it be in connection with Sabbath 
breaking, profanity, or whatever else may tend to mar 
and degrade human nature, and to provoke against us 
the just judgments of Heaven. I am in favor of suclx 
abolition, in short, as is announced in this passage 
from the prophet, and sanctioned by the favor of the 
Lord God Almighty, and let the man who dissents 
from this position stand up on this great day and pro- 
duce hhi reasons. If it is tliis to be an abolitionist. 



20 



then I am an abolitionist. And I can afford here to 
wait and suffer all the present consequences of such 
a declaration, in the firm conviction that the day is 
not far distant when it M'ill be no longer regarded as 
a crime, or even as an indiscretion, for a man to stand 
up here, or in any other portion of the counti-y, and 
plead truly and faithfully for God and his fellow 
men, 

YI. And now once more I mention another crying 
and crushing sin that we have to deplore and lament 
to-day — the sin of secession and rebellion against the 
Government of the United States, and the connivance 
of secret sympathizers and abettors. I regard this as 
a high crime against God and man ; not a mere mis- 
take or misfortune, save where men and women are 
compelled or constrained to act in the character of 
traitors and rebels by the despotic mandate of the 
arch-conspirators against the integrity, the peace, 
and safety of the Federal Union. That there was a 
foul and shameful conspiracy, attended by the inso- 
lence and ferocity of fiends in human shape, first to 
assassinate the President-elect on his way to the Cap- 
ital, and afterwards to seize the city and murder 
Union men, women, and children, there is not the 
slightest doubt; and if the secret history of the plots 
of these men could come to light, it would no doubt, 
startle the whole nation with the horrors of these con- 
templated atrocities. And if we look at the persecu- 
tion and distress inflicted on the innocent wherever 
the ruthless perjurers have been able to hold their 
sway, we shall find that not in all the annals of mar- 
tyrdom have our heroic and faithful countrymen been 
transcended by examples either in the lofty spirit of 
their devotion or in the brutal and bloody savagery 
ox- 



30 



of their oppressors. And yet this Government has 
been unable or unwilling to aflFord them any relief, 
while it shields, and protects, and feeds with almost 
criminal indulgence the secret enemies of its existence 
who live beneath the shadows of its very Capitol, 
detesting it in its magnanimity, and applauding the 
open Treason which with an armed front is clutching 
at its very throat. Amazed at such a state of things, 
I sometimes wonder what posterity will think in the 
clear light of a coming day which I pray may succeed 
the darkness of the present night, in contemplation of 
the subtlety and the depth of the treachery that per- 
vades every nook and corner, and whether they will 
be more astonished at the madness of disloyalty in its 
perversion of the plainest principle of common honesty 
and duty, or at the toleration and clemency of a gov- 
ernment which through years of suffering, disaster, 
and humiliation, still fails not to cherish in its bosom 
this nest of vipers. Nor am I constrained to speak 
thus of a portion of our community from any spirit or 
desire of personal violence or capital retribution but 
such as the necessities of the general safety and of 
self-preservation imperatively demand. I only feel 
that the community ought to be cleared of the spirit 
of disloyalty, by a division of those whose hearts are 
with the South in this rebellion from those whose 
hearts are with the Government up to the full stand- 
ard of scriptural obedience. This is the only way 
that I recognize in which Ave can repent of and forsake 
the sin of sedition and revolt. 

Those who feel at heart no allegiance to the Govern- 
ment should be put beyond the lines at least. Tliat is 
the gentlest visitation that the authorities can lawfully 
bestow; for this is no question of party politics, and I 



31 



deny the imijeachnicnt of it in the most emphatic term?. 
It is purely a question of religious duty which we owe 
to God and our country. And if wc mean to forsake 
our sins, if we mean to put away from among us the 
abominable thing, if we mean to return unto God with 
all our hearts, we must recur to the law of the Bible: 
if thine eye offend thee pluck it out ; if thine hand 
offend thee cut it off. Nay, nay, we have before us, in 
this passage from the prophet, the true solution of the 
issues that are pending. 

And this is called preaching politics. Now. when 
the ship of state, freighted as it is with all our memo- 
ries and all our hopes, lies tossing in the tempest ; when 
it is no longer a question of policy or preference as be- 
tween rival parties and candidates in time of peace, 
but a deeper, broader, more vital question of the tri- 
umph of the Government and the conscience of the 
American people over a system of usurpation and des- 
potism, sustained by an organized and armed rebellion 
against them — now, when a fierce and bloody attempt 
is made to undermine the very foundations of social 
order and to pull down the noblest structure of empire 
the sun has ever shone upon, and to sunder a land that 
was once most happy in all the arts and industries of 
advancing civilization, and to blot out from the face 
of the globe the unit3' of a mighty nation and to im- 
pair forever the greatness and the usefulness of a peo- 
ple among whom the divine jyrinciples and precepts of 
Christianity itself have had their freest and their no- 
blest scope — would it not bethought a thing incredible 
that the Christian people and the Christian ministry of 
this land should stand aloof, should manifest a deep 
and profound indifference, should undertake to live and 
act and i>reach and .=peak and tliink and feel as though 



there were no war, and no judgment of God among u-t 
whatever? And all this, too, while the whole history 
of the nation hitherto has been marked by one contin- 
ued succession of providential interpositions for deliv- 
erance, one constant series of examples of the presence 
and influence of the Christian element in working out 
our national destiny. Without Christianity, the story 
of America never could have been told; these manifold 
and mighty monuments which cover the land could 
never have been reared. None but God can tell the 
effect of Christian prayer and fidelity, in the testimony 
of Christian truth, upon the fortunes of this nation. 
And now, in such a land, with such a record and such 
a prospect, and in such a condition, when we feel and 
know that blows are being struck which, if not repelled, 
must not only destroy our civil heritage, but also roll 
back the chariot of human salvation for a thousand 
years, can the disciples and ministers of 4his Religion, 
which has more than all other things made the land a 
blessing, be excused from the duties and trials which 
now rest upon the nation? Nay, do j'ou not look to 
the Christian sentiment and opinion of this country for 
countenance and support? Do you not rely on the 
loyalty and the prayers of the Christian people of this 
country as constituting under God the firmest and most 
unwavering prop and pillar of the nation's strength? 
If this be so, then I am here to declare, in the name of 
the Christian church, and of all that follow the great 
Head of the church in this land, that as they have 
never, heretofore, been found wanting in the hour of 
the country's need, so they will not now be found 
wanting. For, when it comes to this, the old Religion, 
'.vhicli has, for eighteen hundred years, produced the 
heroes and martvrs of the world, will rise again and 



3:5 



lead her mighty processions into the thickest of the con- 
test. And not till the church of Christ has been utterly 
overthrown, and not until her last prayer goes out. 
and her last soul is offered upon the altar of expiring 
liberty, will it be time for men to s-;iy '-theie is no 
longer any hope." And not until tlion. can the cause 
of America, which Ave believe to be the cause of hu- 
man nature everywhere, be ruined. And for this rea- 
son it is, that in the name of the church we lift up our 
voice — cry aloud and spare not — showing the people 
their sins and transgressions. The Christian mind of 
this nation bejiolds the spectacle wo now present with 
a feeling of the deepest solemnity and the most pain- 
ful suspense. The Christian mind of this nation in- 
terprets the afflictions we are suffering now, as the 
judgments of God for our moral obliquity. It holds, 
that there is righteousness w^hich exalteth a nation, 
while sin is a reproach to awy people. It holds that, 
in a crisis like this, there is but one inspiration that 
can carry us through in triumph, and that is the in- 
spiration of the Almighty. It holds that, among the 
first signs of the presence of such an inspiration is the 
general return of the people to sobriety and virtue ; 
and therefore it views with pain and grief, with appre- 
hension and alarm, the almost universal reign of vice, 
vulgarity, and impurity. And because the nation has 
been so long blind and indifferent to the principles of 
truth, and so long disobedientto the authority of God, 
He has not only kindled the fire of this furnace, but he 
is adding fuel to the flames, and holding us in them, 
that we may be either purified or consumed. That is the 
issue now before us — purification or destruction. It is 
comparatively of litt'e account wliat may be the tidings 
from the great sieges or the battle-fields of our m'litary 
or naval operations: what may be the condition of the 



34 



currency; or the result of local elections; or, indeed, 
what may be the daily contingencies or details that fall 
out to us in the history of this great time ; but the true 
question is, whether, amid all these millions of human 
beings, a sufficient number may be found upon whom 
the inspiration of the Almighty has descended, to render 
it consistent with his most gracious purpose and with 
the character of his supreme government over men, to 
interpose and give us the victory, If this point,hi the 
moral and religious condition of the American people 
can be attained, then vre have no fear for the remain- 
der. The same power that delivered the Hebrew na- 
tion with a high hand and a stretched out arm; the 
same power that shielded the people of the Nether- 
lands against the combined attack of the greatest Po- 
tentates of the time in Europe ; the same power that 
brought our fatliers through the bloody baptism of the 
Revolution, and gave to them, to bequeath to us, their 
children, this glorious inheritance, will thunder for us 
along all our lines of battle, and put our enemies to 
rout and confusion forever. 

I have this faith, then, in the overruling providence of 
God, and, so believing, let me implore my fellow-coun- 
trymen to pause this day and consider how we may best 
serve our country and our Christ in this time of their 
need ; for a bitter curse fell upon Meroz because they 
came not up — not up to the help of the Lord against the 
mighty; and I honestly believe that a deep and bitter 
curse will fall upon that man, that family, that commu- 
nity, that church, or that city that will now draw back 
from following the Lord in the pathway of his present 
providence over this nation. How, then, can you save 
America in this hour of wrath — men, women and chil- 
dren, young men, old men, all men? Hl' i.s the truest 
patriot and best lover of his country, the wisest and 



most efficient friend and helper, who is the most con- 
sistent, earnest, and prayerful Christian. If 3^011 would 
serve the cause of your country, cease to do evil and 
learn to do well; let the wicked forsake his way and 
the unrighteous man his thoughts; if you have received 
a bribe, restore it; if you have profaned the name of 
God, abandon it; if you have trampled on the Sabbath 
daj', trample on it no more; if one have been an infidel, a 
debauchee, or an inebriate, if one have acted dishonestly, 
suppressed the truth, corrupted others, defrauded men 
of their rights, do it no more. Oh! become once again 
a true man, abandon every vice and every iniquity; be 
a man, sobered and chastened by the great realities and 
severities of the time — a man no longer for the levity 
and vain dalliance of the past, but full of the mighty 
thoughts and stern resolves and steady purposes of 
present duty. We cannot anj^ longer trifle before God. 
These are days of sacrifice — the days of heroic suffer- 
ing — the days of many and most noble martjTdoras. 
Oh ! look at the spectacle of the altars and the holocausts 
which are now smoking to heaven in all the land, in 
the very centre of which are lifted up in our American 
Switzerland the mountains of Tennessee where crackle 
the hottest fires of the great persecution. The day of 
peace is gone from us ; God only knows Avhen, or if 
ever, it may return to this generation. Lot us compose 
and prepare ourselves for the sacrifice; let us look 
defeat, disaster, and even death, if need be, steadily 
and calmly in th<> face ; but grasping the pillars of 
God's eternal truth and jus'ico^ and holding up our 
country and all its interests before His throne, let us 
t'jitreat Ilim to turn us from our transgressions, that 
iniquity may not be our ruin. The host of God, bear- 
ing the ark of our sacred institutions, and waving the 
etandard of a mighty peopk in thia last exodus of civil 



36 



luul religious liberty, is now already on its niixrch. 
The trumpets of Providence have summoned the mil- 
lions of our country to its peril and its toil. The pillar 
of fire by night and of cloud by day is moving before 
us. We are standing face to face with God. While 
His majesty fills us with awe, may His mercy arm us 
with strength to live and labor, to watch and pray, to 
suffer and die for our native country and for the king- 
dom of Jesus. Oh ! walk softly, all je people, walk 
softly; for God is among us, and the Searcher of Hearts 
is trying us as the gold is tried. 




J ®ljj Itatiaiial §aiiiin, ^^' 

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